


gospel, for the fallen ones

by Poe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alcohol, Blasphemy probably, Canon Compliant except for the last five minutes of Endgame, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Light Angst, Fluffier than it lets on, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, It's a 5+1 fic but pretentious, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mentions of sex but nothing to warrant going above T rating, Post-Endgame, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-War, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Starts when they're kids but isn't underage, Tenderness, The Asset - Freeform, and everything inbetween, palmistry, they always find each other, with art!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23736478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poe/pseuds/Poe
Summary: Bucky Barnes is puppy fat and cheeks that are round, yet to be carved out by time. Steve Rogers, however, is too pale skin pulled tight over bird bones, a walking memento mori; death always slightly too close to him, and the other kids - they treat him like he's contagious, hissing and spitting. But Bucky knows better.(or: 5+1 times Bucky knew he loved Steve Rogers, and one time he asked to marry him, a study through the decades.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 36
Kudos: 165





	gospel, for the fallen ones

**gospel, for the fallen ones**

**(i.)**

**1927**

Bucky Barnes is puppy fat and cheeks that are round, yet to be carved out by time. Steve Rogers, however, is too pale skin pulled tight over bird bones, a walking memento mori; death always slightly too close to him, and the other kids - they treat him like he's contagious, hissing and spitting. But Bucky knows better, knows how Steve is more akin to the mewling alley cats that fight one another over scraps in the night, that Steve has nine lives, and when he traces Steve's life line, palm cold to the touch, just like his grandmother taught him, and just like his mother told him not to, the crease is so deep it's almost carved in, strong as anything, and Bucky knows that Steve is going to live forever, and that he's going to be loved forever too - because _that_ line? It's just as vivid, like an old scar dashed deep into skin. And when Bucky looks at his own palm, he might wonder if perhaps it's by design that his left hand mirrors Steve's right so cleanly, because Bucky Barnes loves with all his heart, like he might explode from it, and he doesn't have the words for it yet, but when he's older, when the world has sunk its claws into him and tried to make him afraid and failed, Bucky will clench his fist like a secret held tight, because what can they do? Tear his arm off at the shoulder? It's in his blood and it's as old and as honest as his fingerprints - he's going to love Steve Rogers until the day he dies.

  
**(ii.)**

**1935**

  
It's Bucky's eighteenth birthday and he's gotten his hands on Seamus Flanagan's father's kitchen brew - a scratched up bottle that does nothing to hide the clear contents inside. It burns a trail from throat to stomach, loosening his limbs and his tongue in equal measure. He sits on the fire escape opposite Steve and watches him, lets his gaze linger in the way he knows Steve likes, the way that makes Steve go pink and bashful. This evening, as the chilly March sky turns pink and red around them, Steve looks back, blue eyes startling and searching and Bucky clenches his left hand out of habit, holding fate inside it, and wonders if he could be brave enough, if he could ever be brave enough to close the distance and ruin his chances of getting into heaven. He wonders if he was damned the second he drew his first breath, or whether it grew with time, a lifetime of wanting and small touches never quite being enough. "Buck," Steve says, and Bucky blinks, and Steve is right there and his cheeks are flushed and his eyes are bright and the fire escape creaks as he moves his weight to settle between Bucky's splayed thighs. "Buck," Steve repeats and then kisses him, gentle at first, mindful of the split lip he's sporting from a couple of days ago, but then something more, and Bucky surges up to greet it, because this is his damnation and if God strikes him down right now he wants it to be worth it.

**(iii.)**

**1941**

  
  
Bucky plays with the fingers of Steve's right hand, curling and uncurling them as Steve watches him idly, sweat clinging to them and the air thick with the scent of them and the gentle not so gentle sin of it all. Steve's fingers are slim and his knuckles too large for them, sometimes bruised and sometimes bleeding but always so _Steve_ it makes Bucky want to cry or bite them or something, tenderness and savagery getting confused in his brain because Steve Rogers loves him and to be loved by Steve Rogers is fierce and unrelenting and Bucky thinks it's the most wonderful thing in the world. He pushes his thumb between the gaps, where the skin webs and stretches, and Steve is malleable and soft and moves with him and it's too much for Bucky to bear because he gets to have this, in a way nobody else ever gets to, the ache from where Steve moved inside him a few minutes earlier phantom and fresh at the same time, like Steve was carved out of rock - no, carved out of marble and put on this earth, moulded perfectly to fit inside him and God, what a thought. Steve sighs heavy and tired and content, and Bucky mirrors it, his breathing evening out, and he lowers their hands to the bed sheets, not letting go, never letting go, and if their palms line up, then it's just what they were designed to do, isn’t it?

**(iv.)**

**1943**

  
Bucky is trying to get drunk, but the liquor goes down like water and Steve is - Steve is a hundred pounds heavier and a foot taller and still staring at Bucky like Bucky's something precious, ignoring everyone else in the bar, and Bucky wants to tell him to stop, wants to tell him how he feels like they hollowed him out and filled him up with cement instead, how his veins burned and how he can't get drunk and that scares him, but he also wants to know if this is still his Steve, if he can make this body shudder and if Steve still whimpers the same way when he comes. Bucky wants to drag him into a dark corner and ruin that redder than red mouth, bite at it like punishment for Steve's stupid goddamn recklessness, then soothe it better with his tongue. Steve's hand is palm side up on the bar, fingertips loosely knocking against an abandoned glass of something strong, and that life line makes sense now, because it doesn't feel like Steve's mortal anymore - he's a god, more than human, and Bucky almost feels like the snake in the garden of Eden, daring Steve, _take a bite, let me teach you everything all over again. Fall for me._ Steve's fingers twitch like he's reading Bucky's mind, and maybe he can now, because why not? And maybe in a few minutes he'll make his excuses and turn in, a room to himself, he is a captain after all, and maybe a few minutes later Bucky will turn in too, knocking at the door, and Steve will drag him in like if he doesn't kiss Bucky he might die, and it'll be new and it'll be old and it'll be them, again, like the universe's worst kept secret.  
  


**(v.)**

**2014**

  
The Asset watches his mission fall and something resets in his brain like a screwdriver being slammed into his eye socket. _Kill_ becomes _protect_ and the Asset swan dives out of the metal scraping hellscape and into the burning river and grabs hold of the man that knew his name and was willing to die to give it to him. The Asset runs out of air but keeps swimming, lungs burning and head pounding, breaking the surface and gasping like a newborn, dragging the mission above the waterline and swimming for the shore, his arm screaming as he pulls his way through the debris falling from the sky. He drags his mission onto the bank and pounds on his chest until he sputters and spits up, then sits back on his heels for a moment, watching the sky fall into the river like the world might actually be ending. After a couple of minutes, the Asset stands and stumbles into the nest of trees behind them, finding one sturdy enough to reset his arm against, closing his eyes against the pain, wet leather against clammy skin and a name echoing around his head like a gift he never asked for. The mission called him Bucky. He flexes his left hand and the plates of his arm shift and whir. He shakes his head, but the name echoes and echoes and echoes. When he walks out of the woods and disappears into the DC evening, he's not the Asset anymore, the name _Bucky_ imprinted on a soul he's not sure is his. But it's all that he's got.  
  


**(+i.)**

**2023**

  
"Sam called it a global trauma," Bucky says, staring into the sunset, at the normality of it, like it's still allowed to do that. "That maybe nobody will ever be the same again."  
  
Steve sits beside him, not close enough to touch but close enough to feel his heat and reflect it back.  
  
"I missed you," Bucky continues. "I don't know how, but I did."  
  
It's been so long, a lifetime, and he can remember a time when it was easier, when they weren't soldiers, when there wasn't a legacy attached to both of their names. When their battles were back alley fistfights and wounds scarred over and healed and they moved on, convinced of their immortality.  
  
"I feel old," Steve says. "Like I've lived for too long. But at the same time, I don't want to die. I got you back. Again. God. Is that what my life is going to be? Losing you, getting you back, and losing you again?" He laughs harshly. "I ache, Buck, inside. Like I've been bleeding for so long all my organs are starved."  
  
"I'm not leaving again," Bucky says - promises. "They can't kill me again. I'll tear them apart. Every angel and every demon that tries. Let them try. I'm here. You're here. We beat it."  
  
"Beat what?" Steve asks, because it's everything, isn't it? So many odds stacked against them.  
  
"Death," Bucky says. "Too damn stubborn to die. So. Might as well live."  
  
"You think we can?" Steve asks. "After everything? Are we allowed that?"  
  
"Who the fuck's gonna stop us? Who the fuck would dare?" Bucky responds, shifting so their shoulders rub together, and then so his hand covers Steve's, the metal picking up the heat and warming.  
  
"Innocence," Steve says. "That's what the world's lost. Everybody in the world knows what it feels like to lose someone now."  
  
"But you bought them hope too. You brought them back. A second chance. How rare is that?" Bucky says, finding the slots between Steve's fingers and weaving his own in their place. "That's what you did. What you do. Fuck, Stevie, you saved half the universe. Isn't that enough?"  
  
"I'm tired," Steve says and scrubs his left hand across his face. He leans heavily against Bucky. "I'm so tired."  
  
Bucky moves so that he can pull Steve's head to his chest, never unlinking their hands. Steve sighs into it, so weary, as close to broken as Bucky's seen him.  
  
"You can stop now," Bucky says. "We'll both stop. Tell me what you want. I'll make it real. You can rest now."  
  
"You. Brooklyn. A good night's sleep," Steve rambles. "All I've ever wanted, really."  
  
"Okay," Bucky says, because after everything? That's easy. So easy it feels selfish. Too simple. But he'll take it.  
  
He thinks, about all the moments, him and Steve and this weird wretched but incredible journey, not over, not yet.  
  
"Marry me," he says. It feels obvious, overdue, like he was born to say those words. Like he's been waiting all his life for it.  
  
"Bucky?" Steve lifts his head from Bucky's chest and looks straight at him, blue eyes wide and suddenly young again.   
  
"Marry me," Bucky repeats, giddy from it.  
  
When Steve kisses him it feels like catharsis, like the last of the war is bleeding out of them both. It's an answer, _yes, yes, a thousand times yes_. And their bodies haven't forgotten each other, and Bucky knows they couldn't have, because it's always been them, always will be, and all the in-between was just details, filler, gaps and spaces like the black between stars.  
  
"Okay," Steve says when he finally pulls away.  
  
"Yeah?" Bucky grins, revelling in existing, feeling at once like all the air's been punched out of him and at the same time drunk on it, like he might just float away.  
  
"Yeah," Steve says, and rests his head where Bucky's neck crooks into shoulder.  
  
Bucky gathers him close, the sun dipping down, nearly gone now, the last shards coating the world crimson.  
  
 _What is this world?_ Bucky wonders but doesn't say aloud, the boy he loves breathing against his skin. _What is this beautiful, fucked up life?_ _  
  
And how fucking lucky am I to live it?_

It might just be okay, in the end.

**END.**

**Author's Note:**

> Okay! Wow, so this fic is a departure, right? I wrote it at 6am on my phone with a migraine that hurt too much to sleep with, so might as well write, huh? 2,000 words later and I regretted everything, and because I type on my phone like an old person, it took quite some time to do that, to boot. But here it is, and my god, maybe I should always write with a migraine, because I really love how weird and almost poetry-like it turned out? 
> 
> An anon asked for 'Stucky proposal' on tumblr, and this is what happened. I don't tend to write in-canon, so this was a surprise to me, but it felt special, so I got some art made, by the wonderful and talented https://kayaczek.tumblr.com/ who was so patient with me trying to explain my ideas. 
> 
> Writing has been a challenge for me lately, so it's been really fun to slip back into fanfiction, and to push myself in new directions. I want to thank you, for reading this, and for allowing this community to exist. Even if only one person reads this, it was nice to be able to create again, it felt like taking a deep breath after being underwater for a long time. 
> 
> Kudos and comments would be incredible, and you can find me at jbbarnes.tumblr.com or on Twitter or Instagram @smallreprieves. I'm largely a disaster, so that's fun. 
> 
> I really hope you liked this weird little fic. And feel free to throw prompts at me on tumblr, it'd be really, really appreciated. Take care and stay safe. xx


End file.
